Mac SE reborn as a server and Mac emulator

[Sprite_TM] cooked up an amazing hack by resurrecting a Mac SE using a Dockstar and ARM processor. The retro hardware had a bad mainboard thanks to the corrosive properties of a failed backup-battery. He had been wanting to do something with the Seagate Dockstar and decided it would find a nice home in the Mac. But what fun is a dead machine housing a headless server? To add to the fun he included an ARM processor running a Mac emulator, along with all the bits to make the screen, keyboard, and peripherals work. When the Mac is off the Dockstar still runs as a server.

But one of the best parts is the floppy drive. It still takes floppies, but there’s no magnetic media inside of them anymore. Instead, he’s added an SD card slot and some protoboard in the space for the read head. The drive itself has had the read head transplanted for some pogo pins (hey, we saw those earlier today). When you insert the floppy, the pogo-pins raise up and contact the protoboard, connecting the SD card to a Teensy microcontroller.

There’s so much going on with this project we just can’t cover it all here. Things like a chemical cleaning to return the original color of the classic case, and building a converter so that the peripherals are USB compatible are just some of the pleasures awaiting you in [Sprite_TM’s] post. He’s also filmed a demo video that we’ve embedded after the break.

Having a hacked dockstar and having done many unnatural things to old Apple computers as well, I can say this in a rather qualified way: HOLY SHIT this hack is so full of epic win I feel totally unworthy to have even been treated to the video of this. Thank you Sprite! It’s an inspiration!

@DamAdomKOF I agree. One of my favourites. I wish he put in more details, instead of making ridiculous jumps, or at least explained how he thought of certain things. He needs to realize he’s smarter than we are ^_^

The purpose of this hack is to have something that serves Sprite’s files, and that something needs to be on a strict diet.
Power doesn’t come cheap, especially when you are living in a regular house and are expected to pay for your own utilities bill.

A Mac mini or what have you does not fit that bill; this rig does and it looks lovely to boot.

[Pendantic] That’s no SE, that’s an SE/30! [/Pendantic] An SE/30 was my first home PC, and when it lost the place of honor to a Quadra 405, it became my NetBSD testbed until the video went south. Kudos to Sprite_TM for an incredible piece of work.